Page 46 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘I’m here for a baby.’
He coughed. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘You heard me. That’s the goal I said I needed help for. I’m in my thirties, the timing is right, and I’m not in the market for a Mr Hannah Cody. So I need a sperm donor. I’ve chosen you on the condition that you’re not interested in me romantically, and you’ve just confirmed that. Loud and clear. Don’t worry, I’ll provide the equipment and a printed set of instructions.’
Wow. And he’d thought having his hip and back sliced to the bone had hurt. Hannah Cody, the girl he’d lost his heart to what seemed like a lifetime ago, had noticed he existed at last.
But only for his chromosomes.
CHAPTER
17
Hannah had seen animals in her treatment room who had swallowed something they shouldn’t have, like a tennis ball or a footy sock or the neighbour’s guinea pig, and they’d all had the same look of wild-eyed alarm that Tom was giving her now.
‘I’ve thought it all through,’ she said, going for an air of calm reassurance, as though her nerve endings weren’t jangling like interconnected lithium-ion smoke alarms that had just worked out she was ablaze. ‘It’s a lot to take in, and I’m happy to prepare you a folder of information.’
‘Hannah, this is—’
‘I know, it’s a little out of the blue, but it makes a lot of sense, Tom.’
‘—absolutely nuts.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I mean, what are youthinking?’ He still looked stunned. Worse, he looked horrified. Which meant … Oh, god. His alarm wasn’t about the idea of him being asked to be a donor. His alarm was about the idea of her being a mother!
Surely not. Surely Tom knew her well enough to know that deep down she was sensible and practical and caring.
‘It is absolutely out of the question.’ He’d turned away and was covering his eyes with one hand. The knuckles on his other hand were white as they gripped his knee. He was—she choked the hurt down—truly horrified by the idea that she thought she could be a mother.
‘I’ve made a mistake,’ she said. Her keys were somewhere, but where? On the hall table? Had she brought them in here?
He cleared his throat. ‘Hey, look, it’s been a wild week, I get it. I’m sorry, I—well. Emotions riding high and all that. We all blurt out stuff we don’t mean from time to time.’
‘Don’t fucking patronise me. My emotions are fine and dandy, thank you very much, and the mistake I was referring to was me asking you. MrDisinterested.’ She’d have tossed her head if she’d ever bothered learning the knack of it. ‘And I can blurt out whatever the hell I please when I’m talking about my own dwindling ova, thank you very much.’
She spied a glint of silver in the crease between his pants leg and the sofa. Awkward … her keys must have fallen out of her pocket when she straddled him, before her eyes had been opened to what a complete and utter dick he was.
She plucked them out, ignoring his wince. Good. Maybe he’d have a nice key-shaped bruise on his leg to remind him of what an arse he’d been. What a judgemental, patronisingarse.
And to think she’d been going to sully her baby’s gene pool with his. A nice fertility clinic with a checklist where she could tick boxes like ‘kind’ and ‘chest hair’ and ‘doesn’t patronise successful female veterinarians’ was looking better and better.
All she had to do was change her total personality so she could drive to one.
‘I’m going. No need to see me out.’
‘Hannah, would you wait just a damn minute?’
She hightailed it along the corridor, opened the heavy wooden door, raced down the steps and was in her car, turning over the awesomely tuned starter motor, in about five seconds flat. She stalled on the reverse, which wasn’t quite so awesome, but crunched her way into first gear and was about to floor it when Tom’s hand came down on her window.
‘Would you wait a damn minute?’ he yelled through the glass.
‘You’ve said plenty already,’ she yelled back.
‘I haven’t said I’m sorry yet.’
She rolled her window down an inch, so it matched the one in the back where the cold night air was whipping in. ‘I’m listening.’
